Leaning on the parapet, head angled sideways, Resnick waited.
“Seems you’ve got yourself a woman. Serious. Is it true?”
“Probably.”
Grabianski skipped a pebble down into the pond and watched the ripples spread. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks,” Resnick said. And then: “You heard this when you were in the city?”
“Was I in the city?”
“The Dalzeil paintings …”
“Ah.”
“You know they’re missing?”
“I might have heard.”
“Another rumor?”
“Something of the kind.”
“And this rumor, does it tell you whether the paintings have passed on into other hands?”
Grabianski smiled, lines crisscrossing around his eyes. “Nothing so exact.”
“And I don’t suppose a search warrant would help to clarify …?”
“A warrant? For where?”
“I’d have to fill in the details of your address.”
“I’m surprised you think you’d have grounds, especially so far from home.”
“We know you’re interested in the paintings, why else the Polaroids? We know you broke into the house once before. Given your professional reputation, I’d say we had probable cause.”
Grabianski grinned. “If there’s anything to that reputation at all, I shouldn’t think you’d find what you’re looking for wrapped in brown paper underneath the bed.”
“Maybe not.”
A woman went by, running, a black baseball cap reversed on her head, black and white T-shirt, skin-tight black shorts; there was a small water bottle attached to her belt at the small of her back, a Walkman clipped to her side. Sweat shone on her perfect thighs.
Watching, neither Resnick nor Grabianski said a word.
“There’s nothing you can do to help me then?” Resnick said, the runner now out of sight.
“Afraid not,” said Grabianski, smiling. “You know I would if I could.”
They walked on southwards, climbing between a scattered grouping of beeches and down through thickish grass until another path led them past a group of youngsters playing frisbee and up toward the hill where kites flew high and wild and the city could be seen clearly, stretched out beneath them. The Post Office Tower, King’s Cross, the dome of St. Paul’s; the pale columns of Battersea Power Station away to the right, the transmitter blinking from the top of the Crystal Palace mast, the crest of Canary Wharf reflecting back the light in the east.
“Some view, eh, Charlie? Worth traveling a distance to see.”
“Maybe.”
“Didn’t want it to have been altogether a wasted day.”
“No fear of that,” Resnick said. “Old friend of mine to see later …”
“Another?”
“Down there somewhere, Scotland Yard. Transferred into another section recently. Arts and Antiques.”
Back in his flat, Grabianski made a quick and careful inventory of those few items he had still to dispose of and which it might be embarrassing to have found in his possession. Not that he really imagined Resnick and a cohort from the local nick were about to come barging in mob-handed, but there was nothing wrong with taking a little precautionary action. The paintings, of course, were not there and never had been; they were safely bubble-wrapped in the security vault of his bank.
Thumbing through the telephone directory, Grabianski wondered if Resnick had been bluffing about his contact at the Yard. Arts and Antiques-a growing area of expertise.
Eddie Snow, he could see, had not been lying: there was his number, highlighted in bold. More than half-expecting the answer-phone, Grabianski was surprised when Snow himself picked up.
“Eddie,” Grabianski said, “sooner rather than later. We ought to talk.”
“You know the Market Bar?” Snow sounded as if he had been interrupted in the midst of something else.
“Portobello, isn’t it?”
“I’ll see you there. Eight o’clock.”
Before Grabianski could acknowledge this, the connection was cut. He wondered if eight o’clock meant dinner; he’d heard the first-floor restaurant was expensive but very good.
Thirteen
He hadn’t seen it as a sightseeing tour, but that was what it was turning into. Instead of ushering Resnick up to the third-floor office which she shared with two other officers and a deficient air-conditioning unit, Jackie Ferris walked him through the narrow side-streets of Whitehall into St. James’s Park. Beyond a heavy scattering of shirt-sleeved tourists, tufted ducks, and pink flamingos, the broad swathe of the Mall stretched from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch.
“Any excuse to get out, Charlie, you know what I mean? Too much of the job spent in artificial daylight, staring into VDU screens.”
Resnick nodded, noting the tones of the North East still lurking at the back of her now largely neutralized voice. Sunderland? Gateshead?
“Once around the lake and then we’ll find somewhere to sit, that all right for you?”
It was fine.
He had first met Jackie when she was a sergeant in the Fraud Squad, seconded to help him out with an investigation into an insurance company scam involving two associate directors, one head of sales and three-quarters of a million pounds. She still wore the same glasses, round and steel-framed, the same or similar, but the Top Shop jacket and skirt had been exchanged for a Wallis suit with the faintest of stripes, a blouse the color of fresh chalk, shoes with a broad buckle and low heel.
“How come the switch?” Resnick asked as they were crossing the bridge over the water. “Arts and Antiques. Promotion aside.”
“I’d been taking this Open University course. Humanities. One of the modules was History of Art. After all that time with ledgers, spreadsheets, it appealed. Figures still, but a different kind. Besides, me mam wouldn’t let us sit down to us tea of a Sunday without the Antiques Roadshow was on tele.” Seeing her smile, Resnick caught himself wondering why there were still no rings on her left hand. “More of a music man, aren’t you, Charlie?” she said.
Resnick nodded.
“Jazz, isn’t it?”
He nodded again, grateful that she made it sound more like an eccentric affliction than a disease.
There was an empty bench between a trio of stocky Germans poring over their map of London and a man of indeterminate years whose clothing gave off an aura of chronic alcoholic abuse.
From her shoulder bag, where they were jammed between mobile phone and electronic organizer, she fished a packet of Bensons and a slimline lighter. “Not entirely social, Charlie, that was what you said.” She tilted back her head and let the smoke drift out onto the air.
Resnick asked her what she knew about Dalziel and she told him, ticking off his major influences and principal works along the way.
“These days, what are the chances of his stuff coming up for sale?”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“But if it did, there are people who’d be interested?”
She angled her head to look at him. “This is legit?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Hmm. Less easy. Museums, galleries, count them out, of course. But private collectors, there’d be a few.”
“Abroad?”
“Most probably.”
The Germans brought over their map and asked directions to Shepherd’s Market; Jackie told them, clear and precise, and they went on their way.
“How would I find them, these prospective buyers?”
“Through an agent, a dealer.”
“Even though he or she would know, presumably, they were stolen?”
“Not many, but some. Supposing the money was right.”
“And it’s a specialist field?”
“Oh, yes.”
Resnick nodded. “So here I am sitting with my Dalzeils …”
“More than one, then?”
“A pair.”
“You’d be looking to make contact with someone interested in late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century painting, Impressionism, British art in general.”
“And how many … I mean, are we talking a lot of people here or what?”